January - Poem 14

One More Ride Home from School Together / Haley Bosse

I’ve realized why we’re here.

Let your forehead freckle,
rumple of something
I am too afraid to prick.

How do you feel
about this thing of darkness
a minute astride?
The scampering heart,
the hitch in the night.

Come and look.
We passed your family
waiting at home.

Little not-bird,
even beyond,
you have to learn how to swim.

I must stop here.

Words scavenged from Charlie Mackesy, Lidia Yuknavitch, Liz Robbins, Kai Cheng Thom, Monica Ojeda, Emma Jones, Christopher Tang, and Shelley Thomas.

a war of one kind / Jess Bowe

tendrils in the back
is what the shaman told me.
like an octopus.

but surely not as 
wise, an animal like him.
surely not as kind.

my insides spiral.
i am every woman with
a blade in her womb,

bleeding on the skirts
of history, silenced as a 
sniper on the roof.

we are the weapon, our mouths
of grenades and poetry.

Every six months  / Joanna Lee

In the elevator of the cancer center parking garage,
a red-haired woman across from us
is giving me the once-over:
with puffy coat & chunky-
heeled boots hiding my mini-dress,
i’m the giraffe in a candy store
holding your hand while we stalk through security
and to the next set of elevators,
only to sit & sit in a darkening waiting room.

one thirty-nine over seventy-eight.
your blood pressure before they stick
the tube with the camera up your nose & down
your throat. my eyes slide
between the screen and your face
as if i could catch one of them lying, admitting pain.
your vocal cords a half-frozen glossy pink horseshoe
on the monitor, your voice remembering old scars,
the doctor’s arms relaxing as he leans back
against the counter: nothing new.

 
this time, you do not use the pocketknife
in your glovebox to cut off the hospital ID.
on the way over the bridge, stuck in a line
of taillights like a river of fire so i’ll never
make my six o’clock poetry event, you
remark instead on the sunset.
we both look up out the windshield
at the deepening blues, crimson-
streaked, something to see.  

Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum  / Thomas Page

we all went down after the snowbirds re-
turned to the great outdoors where alliga-
tors and egrets gather in communion
in the cool, salty air of januar-
y. all stuffed in a minivan without 
coats or sweaters, when we arrived at the 
museum i remember how quickly you’d 
went to the ticket counter making sure 
that we’d all be able to look at the 
warbirds in the hangars. the air was cold-
er inside of the metal cage holding 
these birds that, according to your tour, were 
used to the balmy airs far out west when 
you flew helicopters. the sterile, gray 
concrete nearly camouflaged the arti-
facts held down by chains and breaks you asked to 
have the curator to open the ca-
bin doors so that we all could see inside. 

Metamorphosis  / Sarah Paley

Black rocks slick with slimy green, I re-call
and grey scummy soap suds floating back
and forth over us. So many yesterdays
but they flash involuntarily and bid
me to acknowledge a sense of time
and chronicle as it’s not possible to return.

If I could know what I do now I’d return.
I’d return to eat the sunken cala
lily – my first meal- oh so good. And that time
Ann and Adrianne and I ate the Brush-back
algae and got drunk on the turbid
stuff. We couldn’t tell today from yesterday.

From above our watery ceiling we heard: “Yesterday
when I was young…” A song about a man’s return
to his youthful dreams. Ann said it made her li-BID-o
sing. Li-What? We didn’t even know to call
a song a song but suddenly we were off. Back
Street Boys boomed from a dock and Time

after Time made Adrianne cry every time.
We swam in circles and listened to it on days
they played it off the boats above. Back
then three polly-wogs who didn’t return
to the shallows were presumed eaten and called
fish sticks. We’d show up, our tails shorter and bid

them goodnight or good morning. We three bid
one another with wishes for a longer time
together. Adrianne sprouted legs first. We called
after her as she crawled ashore. We backed
away and watched. Then I too couldn’t return,
couldn’t stop the changes. No more yesterdays,

not the ones we knew. And now the yesterdays
are everywhere I look. Rivet, rivet I bid
thee the farewell I didn’t get to return
to say. Changes happen – nothing time
can stop though I can’t stop looking back.
Polly wolly doodle. Any requests? Last call.
Call back yesterday, bid time return.

Letting Go of Grief  / Amy Snodgrass

You glide across the overgrown, root-filled hill. 
Cell phones meant to light the way distort you,
make you enormous, looming to the arching attics
in wavy shifting layers, reminding your daughter– 

barefoot behind you–of her anime, ominous and dark:
“Let’s watch together when we get home. Promise?”
Your mother’s absence hovers, sends tendrils that trail 
wisp-like into your bloodstream, attacking from all sides.

But still and of course you promise. 

You gaze up as canopy arms spread and Orion rises.

Later, home: sand-and-salt-filled clothes
in the washing machine, you fulfill your 
promise, fraught with prophecy and fire.  
You hold her elbow in the cup of your palm.

She crumbles softly into sleep.  As you shake 
a gray sheet out over her, you decide. You put 
your clothes in the dryer.  You will shrink that 
titan-sized shadow into one small glowing square. 

And later, as she rests, you will fold it and store it, 
high up and away.